Curtis Edward McCarty, who had been sen­tenced to die three times and has spent 21 years on Oklahoma​’s death row for a crime he did not com­mit, has been released after District Court Judge Twyla Mason Gray ordered that the charges against him be dis­missed. Gray ruled that the case against McCarty was taint­ed by the ques­tion­able tes­ti­mo­ny of for­mer police chemist Joyce Gilchrist, who gave improp­er expert tes­ti­mo­ny about semen and hair evi­dence dur­ing McCarty’s tri­al. Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater said his office will not appeal Gray’s deci­sion.

According to the New York-based Innocence Project, an orga­ni­za­tion that assist­ed McCarty in his efforts to prove his inno­cence, dur­ing McCarty’s first two tri­als, Gilchrist false­ly tes­ti­fied that hairs and oth­er bio­log­i­cal evi­dence showed that McCarty could have been the killer. In both tri­als, the juries con­vict­ed him and he was sen­tenced to death. In Gilchrist’s orig­i­nal notes, hairs from the crime scene did not match McCarty. She then changed her notes to say the hairs did match him. When the defense request­ed retest­ing, the hairs were lost. A judge has said Gilchrist either destroyed or will­ful­ly lost the hairs. DNA test­ing in recent years has also shown that anoth­er per­son raped the vic­tim. McCarty’s has main­tained his inno­cence since his arrest.
(The Oklahoman, May 11, 2007 and The Innocence Project; see also Los Angeles Times, May 12, 2007). See Innocence. His release marks the 124th death row exon­er­a­tion since 1973. His is the first exon­er­a­tion from death row in 2007.

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